Kendrick Lamar – Squabble Up
Rounding out our 2024 catch-up is this #1 hit that is now our #1 hit (so far)…
[Video]
[8.30]
Melody Esme: Obviously, “Not Like Us” was Kendrick’s song of 2024 (and, consensus-wise, maybe the song of the year, full-stop, though it’ll have to fight “Good Luck, Babe!” for the title). But with its brilliant sample of the fourth greatest freestyle song ever, the “I feel good, get the fuck out my f-a-a-ace” hook, and no cultural context needed to get it beyond hip-hop’s history of braggadocious jams, “Squabble Up” may prove more enduring down the road. His most immediate, purely catchy single since “King Kunta.”
[9]
Katherine St. Asaph: At first I thought the “When I Hear Music” sample was gimmicky J. R. Rotem shit and a weird attention grab by Kendrick Lamar — who, after “Not Like Us,” has earned more automatic attention than many artists ever do. But it’s cool how Sounwave and Jack Antonoff (still unfairly maligned, do not @ me) completely transmute its genre and timbre. Feels like Kendrick’s coasting, but people said that about “Not Like Us” too.
[8]
Ian Mathers: Do you think Kendrick is going to start getting people yelling “Not Like Us” at his shows, “Free Bird” style? Do you think if he does, they’ll get their asses beat?
[9]
Julian Axelrod: An incomplete list of words and phrases from this song that I will eternally hear in Kendrick’s nasally tone: broccoli, hydrated, deluxe, bunk skunk, thunk thunk thunk, and of course, “squabble up,” ten beautifully arranged letters that should replace the Hollywood sign. On an album where Kendrick pays extensive tribute (stylistically, if not explicitly) to the late, great Drakeo the Ruler, this song best captures his predecessor’s gift for saying words you’ve never heard in a way you’ll never forget. After a decade of touting himself as the voice of a generation, it’s fun to hear Kendrick test the limits of his generational voice.
[8]
Taylor Alatorre: He probably should run for mayor when he’s done, to be honest, because “Squabble Up” is a masterclass in political pivoting. For those who still haven’t gotten all the Drake slander out of their system, there’s enough thickly veiled shade here to satisfy, and the instant “victory lap” consensus is not an incorrect one. But to the extent that the disses exist, they’re knotted in such Gordian forms that, even when untangled, a plausible deniability is maintained: is this really anti-Aubrey sentiment, or just your everyday hater-stomping? The floor-filling sample seems to nudge toward the latter, and the type of close listening that’s most being rewarded here isn’t the lyrical kind; it’s the kind that takes pleasure in tracing out the sonic signature of a charmed cultural moment, specifically the year when Lil Jon became E-40’s main producer. The hype train must be kept a-rollin’, and to that end, Mr. Morale must be politely shoved aside, with “Mr. Get Off” allowed to take his place. Kendrick is wise to juggle the competing expectations of a bifurcated audience, and even more so to realize that the most transferrable element of “Not Like Us” is its aural pantomiming of street justice. Try as you might, there is no rebuttal to thunk thunk thunk thunk thunk.
[8]
Aaron Bergstrom: Sometimes an irritant just becomes a part of your environment. Maybe it’s a persistent noise or an unpleasant smell. You live with it every day. You get used to it to the point where it doesn’t even register anymore. Then, one day, it’s gone. You feel an incredible lightness, like a weight has been lifted from your subconscious. You’re free. How did you ever live like that for so long? Anyway, that’s what it feels like to finally hear a Kendrick Lamar song that isn’t about Drake.
[9]
Leah Isobel: Feels like a loaded time to say that I’m not really a Kendrick girlie, but here we are. I don’t dislike him — he’s quite talented! — but I tend to prefer artists with more cartoonish and unpredictable personae. (I remain, after all these years, an Azealia Banks stan. Do not fucking @ me.) Conversely, even Kendrick’s most fantastical material tends to orbit around relatively predictable markers of seriousness and skill. Like here, for instance. I love his drunk-singalong delivery of the hook, I love that “thunk-thunk-thunk-thunk-thunk” bit, and I love the Debbie Deb sample. But the production is too mannered and clean, too obvious in its references, and while Kendrick’s deployment of different vocal levels and styles is impressive, it also feels a little bit more like a highlight reel than a choice made with this specific song in mind. I imagine there are more eyes and ears on him now than in years past, more listeners and fans expecting him to further delineate the contrast between the serious hip-hop that his image has come to epitomize and the unserious, morally bankrupt, culture-vulture pop shit that The Other Guy made his name on. It might not appeal to my tastes, but I don’t blame Kendrick for complying.
[6]
Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: I’ve always thought Kendrick was, counter to popular conception, a better singles artist than album artist (case in point: the thrill of “The Heart Pt. 5” vs the tedium of Mr. Morale). On GNX, he splits the difference — it’s an album that sheds the rich conceptual heft of his prior records for a slightly elevated take on untitled unmastered., a wiry collection of endlessly compelling sketches and hooks. “Squabble Up” is not my favorite song from that album (I prefer the gloriously bassy “Dodger Blue,” and not just for its half-decade-on Roddy Ricch revivalism), but it’s a perfect illustration of why GNX works; it’s a dense, insular song, flooding the zone with catchy fragments and vocal tics. Over a canvas of ’80s electro nostalgia, Lamar sounds almost smug in his victory lap boasts; it’d be frustratingly egotistic if he wasn’t such a compelling impressionist; leaving aside his skills as a lyricist, he can mine a wealth of feeling just out of saying “squabble up” in different intonations.
[8]
Jonathan Bradley: Kendrick caught in that strobe-lit hallway, rapping about being reincarnated over hyperventilation desperate enough to be the aspiration of predator as to be prey. When “Squabble Up” appeared in full form on GNX, four-and-a-half months after it was teased in the “Not Like Us” video, it transformed from claustrophobic heater to something expansive enough to reach deeper into history than it does into physical space. The Debbie Deb sample leavens the beat — freestyle’s sweetness can’t help but do that — but Sounwave’s production (with, intriguingly, an assist from Jack Antonoff) draws on Los Angeles’s ancient connection to the electro sound: Egyptian Lover and the World Class Wreckin’ Cru live on in Lamar’s 2024. It’s Kendrick’s ideology in musical form, and the case he pressed against bête noire Drake for the entirety of last year: that hip-hop is cultural expression constructed from granular specifics. It’s built from specific places, specific histories, specific communities, and their specific histories and shared historiographies. Tell me why you rap if it’s fictional, he asks, and that might be an attempt to out-real the competition, but it’s also a demand not to allow this music to become deracinated and dislocated. He draws from hyphy here too — the “I’m finna go dumb” call-and-response in the bridge — and that’s a favorite creative font for Drake too; Kendrick, maybe, is underlining that as a Californian he shares this Bay Area heritage in a way his adversary doesn’t; that Oakland show won’t be Kendrick’s last stop. “Squabble” is a great word, petty and picayune, but expressed in a rush of sibilants and plosives. These are sounds for Kendrick to grasp and play with, and he extends that craft through his verses. “Yee-haw, we outside,” he drawls in sardonic character. “Get the fuck out my face,” as the hook possesses a rude vibrato. “Broadie,” “broccoli,” “couldn’t try me in the tri-state” are run out too. But “Squabble Up” isn’t just a freestyler showing off; the verbiage is there for the same reason the expansive production is. Kendrick wants rap to say something, but he knows that how it says it matters just as much.
[8]
Nortey Dowuona: Bless this man. He made this, this, and this. Maybe Kendrick Lamar / Matana Roberts / Scott Bridgeway collab album? (Stop clowning him for his bonnet, Kendrick. His hair looks better than yours.)
[10]